Tag: broadband

Recently, Orange passed 22 million homes, Telefónica 20 million, and AT&T is now reaching five million more every year. The Chinese have over 300 million FTTH connections. What does FTTH do for ARPU, churn, OPEX and 5G that makes it so compelling?

5G deployments will need new allocations of radio spectrum, particularly to achieve promised speeds, and target new IoT use-cases. However, the official process for releasing new frequencies is slow and cumbersome. Some countries may short-circuit the process. At the same time, the rationale for new sharing mechanisms, that allow industrial and vertical players to acquire spectrum for their own networks, outside of MNO control, is growing. What should telcos do?

The evolution of eSIMs, supporting remote provisioning of mobile operators’ profiles, could allow new IoT devices and business-models to thrive. However, the promise is countered by fears that eSIM could enable Internet companies and device manufacturers to become connectivity gatekeepers. We analyse the threats, opportunities and practicalities, and give our view of the likely outcomes.

There’s a lot at stake in 5G, and many players are understandably pushing their own views and strategies hard. Our latest analysis summarises the story so far, the barriers, players and timelines, and how we see it playing out.

5G was one of the dominant topics at MWC 2016, and a key theme was the push by many infrastructure vendors and chipset manufacturers to bring forward the timeline for development of an early version of 5G. Some leading operators are also stepping up to support this vision. Fortunately, the “early 5G” group’s wish-list is relatively simple: it’s about capacity, cost, and carbon dioxide.

Cable operators are on the verge of a massive and remarkably easy capacity upgrade. Where it has begun, fixed incumbents are already being forced to deploy fibre. Gigabit WiFi is coming too, so mobile operators are very much concerned.

AT&T’s residential fixed operation is underperforming as faster cable connections take over. It would probably like to trim its footprint or get out, and invest in fibre and its content business model. Is that really an option, and what are the lessons for other telcos?